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28
Life and Works
study Smith's Harmonics. Now this Robert Smith was the author of A Complete System of Optics, a masterly work, which, notwithstanding the rapid growth of that branch of the science, is not yet wholly superseded. It seems to us not unlikely that Herschel, studying the Harmonics, conceived a reverence for the author, who was at that time still living, so that from the Philosophy of Music he passed to the Optics, a work on which Smith's great reputation chiefly rested; and thus undesignedly prepared himself for the career on which he was shortly about to enter with so much glory."[1]
There is no doubt that this conjecture is a true one. The Optics of Dr. Smith is one of the very few books quoted by Herschel throughout his writings, and there is every evidence of his complete familiarity with its conclusions and methods; and this familiarity is of the kind which a student acquires with his early text-books. One other work he quotes in the same way, Lalande's Astronomy, and this too must have been deeply studied.
During the years 1765–1772, while Herschel was following his profession and his
- ↑ Foreign Quarterly Review, volume 31.
